Queer Arab Film Festival: 'A Jihad for Love' (2007)

3 September, 20144.00pm - 7.00pm (depending on film length)

A Jihad for Love Parvez Sharma (2007) 81 min.Parvez Sharma’s documentary A Jihad for Love considers the perspectives of those who are trying to reconciliate a non-normative sexuality with their practice of Islam. It also considers their often fraught place under Islamic authority and within Muslim communities around the world. Sharma’s film includes extraordinarily diverse interviews, such as with an openly gay Imam from South Africa, an Egyptian who was imprisoned and tortured for his sexual orientation, and a group of asylum seekers. In expressing muslim LGBTQI individuals’ struggle to love who they want, A Jihad for Love breaks the silence and shatters stereotypes within the Muslim world and beyond it. Film introduced by and Q/A with Associate Professor Lily Rahim, Department of Government and International Relations.

A/Professor Rahim lectures on Southeast Asian Politics and Political Islam at the Department of Government and International Relations. She is currently engaged in a global project on democratisation and secularism in the Muslim World and has published in numerous international journals and book chapters. Her latest book is 'Muslim Secular Democracy: Voices From Within' (NY: PalgraveMacmillan).

All films in the Queer Arab Film Festival are in English or subtitled. Free Event - All Welcome. For a full list of films in the series downloada copy of the program.

Queer Arab Film Festival is presented by the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and the project A Continuing Spring: Arab and Australian Views on Social Justice, Equal Economic Development and Cultures of Freedom. The project A Continuing Spring is sponsored by the Council for Australian Arab Relations (CAAR).